Carving Hand
by Ultimagu
Summary: Lelouch contemplates as he faces the execution squad. Takes place in episode 19 of the second season. Please R&R.
1. Story

**AN: I do not own any part of the Code Geass universe except the crazy ideas I may write about for your viewing pleasure. **

**Review Commentaries:**

**Nyoromo: **Does history repeat? I wonder something of your thoughts in asking that question: is history the same as the past?

**(Story)**

_I understood my fellow man better than most. I once stood with the possibility of gaining the throne for dictating the very fabric and code of the strongest empire in the world. The problem with empires is that someone has to be on the bottom. When I arrived in Nipon, land of the Rising Sun and defier of Father, that lesson was drilled into my mind as I carried my sister over the countless bodies. To cross streets or find meals, we had to walk on the corpses of those who had not survived Father's drive for Yesterday._

_I understand now better than my younger self, who felt so deeply and yet showed so little. In the ghettos, Elevens were dying out and being exterminated without remorse. That they might not have been a part of a system against them, a racial ideology barred them from entrance into Britannian, the High Society, echelons. Who could accept such blatant disrespect to the humanity of all? That forever, one man and his children and his children's children and his children's children's children would forever be lower than I or perhaps some pompous noble of ignoble blood._

_I understood and had such passion, even before Our peculiar meeting, to rid the world of the ideology which corrupted the EU, bitterly ruined the Chinese Federation, and was the symbol of my own Homeland. I, accursed naivety I once held, once believed much as my Rival and Friend believed that man could inheritantly be changed from within. But those of power do not wish to depart with power. The French Revolution, where Les Driots des Hommes declared all citizens of the state equal, corrupted itself by establishing a monarchy where inheritant value still played a role._

_I knew, knew it so terribly well from within; within my primal bestial self, I knew that man does not rework himself from within. Man carves himself a new vessel he calls 'The Promised Land', 'The New Age', 'Utopia'. Upon Our peculiar meeting in the ghetto I found myself with a power unlike I had ever heard, but it could so easily bring me to force the world to capitulate from its' tireless war of social movement._

_Because ultimately, I had to question myself, why were these completely self-sustainable nations waging war upon one another? For an offense which took place so deep within man's history we cannot retrieve the fact from the flow of time? Quite possibly. However, it is more likely, I decided, that our previous 2,000 years of war had been about social movement. When the lands became too confined, strike the match and fan the flames of war! Demonize and dispossess those conquered fools from Gaul, from Afrika, from the New World, from Australie, from...from...the distant islands, from...from...from where? We ran out of new people to expand towards and convert for social flexibility, and instead, like cannibals, turned upon lands well-known to us._

_"We once inhabited these lands! You stole them from us!."_

_'How can you say such things? We have always lived here!'_

_"To Hell with your pretensions of peace and prosperity! To war men! To war!"_

_'Call to ready my brothers! The fools drive once more!'_

_By 1750, this Imperialistic world realized that it would soon inhabit all the lands from a singular space, and thus a final war was on the horizon, brewing across old borders. Mankind rejected this, from his lowliest echelon to near the highest, perhaps fearing the incomprehensible brutality required for such a...work of art in carving. The French were first. There wizened king, feeling the collapse of his state attempted to call upon the structures within to find solution to his fiscal problems. Instead, they reversed his Absolute rule as the First Citizen and beheaded him. Later, a little more or less than a decade passed when HE grabbed the throne of France. The Bringer of Death, the Destroyer of Nations, the Equalizer of Mankind: Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France._

_Napoleon was so successful that by the early 19th century he had ousted the Britons from their native island and established his Absolute rule spanning throughout Europe. It could have been that this was the prophetic 'War to End All Wars', but it was not to be. Napoleon halted all social movement. Educate the people, yes. Provide for the people, yes. But they were forever below at least one: himself._

_Thus the French Empire spanning across Europe and Northern Afrika became a hegemonic power of separate states, the EU._

_Now, as I see my own men staring me down with more guns that might have ever been used for an execution, I must ponder all of this. Is this the end of my journey? Was my carving unsuccessful? But no, see their bated hands and abstaining dissolution of me? They fear my status, my past, the man behind the mask. But they respect Zero, the hero, the scion, the Mask. Someday, I think, someone might take up this symbol and make new meaning of it. Or...perhaps still yet, someday a boy or girl might place a bloodied and worn mask upon their head and be granted vision and prophecy of the key to mankind's Unity!_

_Here they accuse me now, the wretched birth which weighs upon my mind and soul, lineage directly to their most hated foe. In me our bonds feel withered and snapped, so it has come to be that the Black Knights of Universal Justice have found me unfit for their Revolution. If it is as much, perhaps I shall become historically similar to that distant French Emperor who was betrayed before he could complete his final, the most unnerving, plans for society._

_I hear their guns click bullets into the barrel, ready to penetrate me._

(After Rolo's Rescue)

_If there is one lesson to be learned of this affair, it is ultimately that Revolution is not of a despotic rule which cajoles its' populations into the same purely by force._

Lelouch felt the emotion swirl within his chest once more, another death counted upon his head of sins. He'd come so far already and held the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, there upon his shoulders. Rolo's death took precedence because it once again reminded him that he was committed to his course. Lelouch could no longer turn from his Revolution. This would be an all or nothing gamble until he died. He would empathetically feel every death and tragedy and bear it all. It was his curse for striking down another man, even if it was for the better of all.

_I learned that Revolution ultimately requires not tools of the state or the puppeteer, but willing souls ready to die for the cause. Today, in my revolution, it is I who bears the guilt of the Carving Hand._

**(Story)**

**AN: I wrote for once, not to inspire people in the grandiose possibilities of historical importance, but to remind us of our own historical revolutions. I know that somewhere along the line that it has been argued that such historical events as the rise of Nazi power or the Terror in the French Revolution or the Soviet Revolution was simply a small group of people enforcing their views onto others. As possible as it may be, we must also come to terms with the example Rolo shows and deeply contrasts in the episode I'm pulling these events from. Rolo casts off our notions that he is nothing more than Lelouch's tool to come to realize he is still his own person; Rolo does everything that he does of his own volition. Consider that when we gaze into our own past and ponder upon such grotesque scenes as January 30th, 1933 in their importance to later events.**

**Second Author's Note: Review if you want, I read and respond to all so if you say or ask something stupid, you'll only get a stupid response.**

**AN3: October 5****th****, 2012: Well, here's to another year of continuing my writing under the auspices of the beautiful and linguistically glorification of battle, blood, guts, and glory. ^^**

**Author's Announcements:**

I know hardly anyone reads my profile (which wouldn't matter since it's out of date anyway), so I have posted these following announcements in all of my stories to let you formally know that I will be attempting to write chapters for most of my stories once again. I cannot guarantee anything, but I am most willing to make the effort.

That's the important part. Here come the details (your queue to leave if you want).

**Reasons Why I Haven't Been Writing:**

Well…geez, put me on the spot without time for cookies or milk. I haven't been writing mostly because of the combined dedications my life has required of me. In the time since I wrote _Memoirs of a Time Traveler_ I have done the following things, each further complicating my life as a burgeoning adult:

1. Began a polyamorous relationship.

2. Managed to get my girlfriend of five years pregnant.

3. Fought with the parents of the newest member of our 'Triad' in the Triangular relationship.

4. Finally given up the idea of trying to treat both of my girlfriends equal in public status and married my pregnant girlfriend (to avoid the evil state of Indiana's bureaucracy).

5. Had my mother-in-law move in to help us with bills.

6. Had a child whom we call Alex.

7. Managed to obtain a 35 hour job (which previously had been 20 hours since after #3 but before #4).

8. Have continued my undergraduate education throughout the entire process.

**Reasons Why I Will Begin Writing Anew:**

These are the reasons why I'm more optimistic about a renewed writing!

1. Resigned from my job since my boss is a douche and was probably going to fire me anyway.

2. Finals are over!

3. Looking for another job and taking care of Alex, but still plenty of free time from the additional hours (some 70 in my week) which have been freed up recently.

4. Because I hate to see 'abandoned' on my stories!

I look forward to presenting everyone with wonderful new material on old ideas. Let it be known, however, that not all of my lack of posting is from a lack of writing. I have written three chapters for various stories when my computer crashed around seven months ago. Don't blame me, blame the elves.

So, without further ado, I bid you welcome into a new age of writing by Ultimagu.


	2. END

**AN: I do not own any part of the Code Geass universe except the crazy ideas I may write about for your viewing pleasure.**

**AN: October 4****th****, 2012: Well, here's to another story edited. Yay! Maybe you now review? Me like review. You give me review! Or I kill you!**

**Anyway, this is an END chapter meaning that my comments to your reviews will be posted here. It's a part of my new standard I began around late April to early May. You'll notice the standard in any story with a bolded author's note at the end of the chapter along with a disclaimer at the beginning of every single chapter which has been recently revamped, betaed, and edited.**

**Review Commentaries:**

**(None at the moment)**


End file.
